Arch Linux

av

Member

Registered: 2012-03-17

Posts: 32

New username for /home keepers? [Solved]

Having recently migrated to Arch, I'm currently in the process of studying every single thing that's been written about it.
During one of my subresearches, I read that if someone decides to keep their /home partition when reinstalling Arch,
they will necessarily have to pick a new username or there will be problems with some processes.

Is that true? And if so, won't picking a different username make it difficult to "control" /home?

Last edited by av (2012-03-18 11:31:55)

/dev/zero

Member

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2011-10-20

Posts: 1,247

Re: New username for /home keepers? [Solved]

Please provide a reference.

SS4

Member

From: !Rochford, Essex

Registered: 2010-12-05

Posts: 699

Re: New username for /home keepers? [Solved]

Usually it's due to distro specific dotfiles. Eg ~/.config/openbox

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Meyithi

Member

From: Wirral, UK

Registered: 2009-06-21

Posts: 550

Website

Re: New username for /home keepers? [Solved]

Just rename the old folder and use the same username, you can test and copy configs across then at will and when satisfied scrap the old folder.

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av

Member

Registered: 2012-03-17

Posts: 32

Re: New username for /home keepers? [Solved]

Please provide a reference.

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 26#p508126

Offtopic: Funny thing, I had read that article that you've got in you signature about Linux NOT being Windows, when I first installed Linux.
I had even sent the link to a friend of mine, he most probably just ignored me but still. Fate and such..

av

Member

Registered: 2012-03-17

Posts: 32

Re: New username for /home keepers? [Solved]

Don'tknowhowtomultiquote, SS4:  So I only have to do this if I change distro? And if that's the case, will everything else be alright?
Cause I had also read that keeping /home when changing distros may result in a different kind of problems.
But please don't ask me for reference on that too, cause I will just drown in my browser's History.

Again, Meyithi:  Actually I want to ask the same thing; whether or not I should do this even if I reinstall the same distro.
Cause I think I'm going to stick with Arch.

Last edited by av (2012-03-17 21:10:32)

/dev/zero

Member

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2011-10-20

Posts: 1,247

Re: New username for /home keepers? [Solved]

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 26#p508126

I see. The way I interpret cerbie's remark is that in fact it is not necessary to pick a new username. Cerbie's experience suggested to him or her that you're better off starting with a fresh home each time; but it's not necessary. And I agree. However, I don't agree that it's necessary to choose a new username, provided you keep the old /home separate, and migrate configs and documents over manually, as others have suggested.

As you guessed, gifting your old files to a different username could lead to complications. I doubt it would break anything that couldn't be easily fixed, but OTOH why make life harder than it needs to be?

Offtopic: Funny thing, I had read that article that you've got in you signature about Linux NOT being Windows, when I first installed Linux.
I had even sent the link to a friend of mine, he most probably just ignored me but still. Fate and such..

lol, fate? The Rootless Root is also worth reading ;-).

azleifel

Member

Registered: 2007-10-28

Posts: 486

Re: New username for /home keepers? [Solved]

I must say that I've never had a problem reusing home directories, though I've only ever installed Arch three times.  Keep /home on a separate partition and recreate any users in the order in which they were originally created, to ensure that they have the same GID, using useradd without the -m switch.  The alternative is to restore /etc/group* and /etc/shadow* from backup.

av

Member

Registered: 2012-03-17

Posts: 32

Re: New username for /home keepers? [Solved]

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 26#p508126

I see. The way I interpret cerbie's remark is that in fact it is not necessary to pick a new username. Cerbie's experience suggested to him or her that you're better off starting with a fresh home each time; but it's not necessary. And I agree. However, I don't agree that it's necessary to choose a new username, provided you keep the old /home separate, and migrate configs and documents over manually, as others have suggested.

As you guessed, gifting your old files to a different username could lead to complications. I doubt it would break anything that couldn't be easily fixed, but OTOH why make life harder than it needs to be?

Offtopic: Funny thing, I had read that article that you've got in you signature about Linux NOT being Windows, when I first installed Linux.
I had even sent the link to a friend of mine, he most probably just ignored me but still. Fate and such..

lol, fate? The Rootless Root is also worth reading ;-).

Damn. I don't know much about how these things work and, as you probably noticed, I don't even know how posting on forums works (...) so please bear with me. I thought: the username that we're talking about and the root user that I thought he was talking about, need to be the exact same thing -> he had new ones created -> he had copied some config files prior to the reinstallation and, later on, replaced the new ones with them after the system was installed. My wild imagination strikes again..

Ha, I already bookmarked it! I always bookmark thousands of pages and then, at some point, read them all together to make room for the new ones. I even read them simultaneously, at times. And I obviously end up misunderstanding every little thing about them, as pictured above, yes..

I must say that I've never had a problem reusing home directories, though I've only ever installed Arch three times.  Keep /home on a separate partition and recreate any users in the order in which they were originally created, to ensure that they have the same GID, using useradd without the -m switch.  The alternative is to restore /etc/group* and /etc/shadow* from backup.

So multiquoting was that easy.. Thank you very much for the helpful tips, I wrote them down and am looking forward to newbily crash my system so that I will be able to finally apply all that /home stuff that I keep reading about.

Thank you all for the replies. /dev/zero, keep it up.